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Michelle Hazzard's Profile

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My Hooping Questionnaire

How old are you? Younger than my body feels.

When did you first start hooping? August 2008, I taught a day camp for kids during June, July and August. I bought them a children’s hula hoop from Walmart to play with during their recess time. One day, the girls were hooping and asked me if I could do it – I said, “of course” and gave it a shot. I hooped as well as they did and thought to myself that it was a lot of fun and that I should buy my own hoop. I randomly mentioned it to a guy that I barely knew. He said, “have you gone to hooping.org yet?” I went to the website, made my own hoop and have been having a blast ever since!Would you call yourself a beginner, intermediate or advanced hooper? Intermediate.

How often do you hoop? As often as possible. Maybe an hour or two a day.

Do you have an indoor hoop space? Used to. I just moved and now I have a pretty small spot to work with...but as soon as my boyfriend goes to sleep at night, I move all the furniture to the walls and come up with something more acceptable.

Do you have friends nearby to hoop with? My imaginary unicorn Alex spins it on his horn.

Do you buy hoops or make your own? I make my own.Have you lost weight since starting to hoop? Since I got serious about hooping, I've lost 10 pounds.

What size is your favorite hoop? My favorite hoop is 36 inches. I think I might be ready to go down just a few more inches though.How did you learn the majority of the tricks you know today? YouTube.

Who is your favorite hoop teacher? Definitely Safire…one of her videos was the first one I found.

What advice would you give to to beginner hoopers? Keep working at it – sometimes a new trick will seem really impossible when you are working on it – but time will make it work. It takes time for your body to learn to react in the right way, something that is really hard today might become super easy tomorrow. Eventually, you learn to anticipate what your hoop is doing and you start to feel the pull and push and you just understand what will happen.

What was the first trick you learned (besides waist hooping)? Does the helicopter count? I thought I was so cool.

What trick so far was the hardest for you to learn? Leg hooping, it took me at least a month to get the whole pull out and jump back in thing down, and even longer to learn how to bring it back up from the knees to the waist. After I got that down, I knew I was a professional. :)

Which one are you finding is almost impossible to get? None at the moment. I need to start looking for a new trick to work on.

How many hoopers would you say live in your town/city? At least a million – they just don’t know it yet…

What’s the worst injury you’ve acquired from the hoop? I hurt some muscle in my back (by doing a new trick over and over and over again until the muscle got too tired) – it took FOREVER to heal…and I kept hurting it over and over again by trying to work on the trick before it was healed completely. I go to the chiropractor once a week. He always says, "how did the hula hoop treat you this week?" I did whack myself quite a bit when I first started.

Michelle Hazzard's Journal

About two weeks ago a tragedy happened. My beloved hoop (after mistakenly being treated like a cup of coffee and forgotten on the roof of a truck) went flying into rush-hour traffic. Luckily no one was hurt when the teal and white flying saucer landed in the middle of one of the most popular roads in town, but my boyfriend, who was the forgetful culprit, risked his life to rescue my favorite hoop. He and the hoop made it back to the truck safely…

Deciding a direction is the hardest part. The great thing about learning to hoop is that you now have a strong relationship with the experience of learning something from scratch. If you can teach yourself (even with tutorials you are still the one getting up and practicing every day) and develop a skill in something than you can apply that and develop your skills in ANYTHING. I've noticed this time and time again.

Hey there Michelle! I love watching your hooping videos! <3 And you play the didgeridoo too? How long have you been playing? I love that instrument soooo much! There's a didgeridoo gathering in Oregon every August, it's an amazing didgeridoo fun filled weekend!
And as for my fire minis... I just made two hoops that I liked and gave them to a friend to turn them into fire hoops for me. So I didn't measure them, just just feel right :)
Hope all is well with you!
Peace and Harmony